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TU-95MS – Soviet Bomber
- izzydata 13y agoItem specifics Condition: Used Seemed funny to me.
- gesman 13y agoDoes preloaded cargo included?
- arethuza 13y agoWhat were you expecting, one of these? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba
- aren55555 13y agoWonder how it would be "shipped"
- fiatmoney 13y ago"Our partner in the Ukraine have acquired an aircraft..." Seems legit.
- jedmeyers 13y agoYep, especially "THE Ukraine" part.
- ljoshua 13y agoThat actually used to be the proper way to refer to the country in English, but has since fallen out of common parlance. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine#cite_note-merriam-webster-20 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine#cite_note-merriam-webst...
- aroch 13y agoAt some point, it was decided that 'The Ukraine' referred to the Soviet state and 'Ukraine' to the free country.
- jedmeyers 13y agoUsed to. There used to be slaves, but it does not mean that it's acceptable to enslave people now. While slavery and saying "the Ukraine" is not the same, the latter shows the clear lack of geopolitical knowledge.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- trhway 13y agowhen Tu-95 were flying out on patrol in Atlantic, the US underwater listening stations (for submarines) installed on the Greenland-Iceland-Norway line were registering the planes too.
- TylerE 13y agoThe TU-95 is probably the loudest vehicle ever built that wasn't rocket powered. The prop tips are well into the supersonic range.
- votingprawn 13y ago> The prop tips are well into the supersonic range. I've yet to come across any firm proof that the Bear has supersonic tip speeds, even the wiki article says "according to one media source". Now obviously with any prop aircraft you can generate a scenario where the tips go supersonic, but I feel "The prop tips are well into the supersonic range" is a disingenuous statement. I do agree with you in general principle though - tips can, and do, go supersonic. Some back-of-the-napkin calculations for the Bear, using the figures given by the media source on wikipedia: 5.7m prop diameter 750rpm at cruise Circumference = pi*diameter = 18m 750rpm = 12.5 rotations a second Giving a tip speed of 220m/s, so contrary to the media source the blades are not supersonic by themselves. You could, of course, engineer a scenario where the combination of the airflow through the prop + the prop tip speed > mach. But you can do that with a Boeing Stearman too, you just avoid it by design due to the increase in drag, and not to mention the stress placed on prop blade that is subsonic at the root, transonic in the middle, and supersonic at the tip. I've seen people give the noise created by the Bear as evidence of supersonic blades, but I'd put that down to interactions between the contra-rotating props, a bit like blade slap on a helo. Now the Republic Thunderstreak is an interesting story - a plane with (proven) supersonic blades: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFhSzReWTgs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFhSzReWTgs
- protomyth 13y ago"Our partner in the Ukraine have acquired an aircraft of type the TU- 95MS" Uhm..... To be fair, it is a pretty fast prop plane if restored.
- imadethis 13y agoI too often buy military surplus hardware from ebay sites in Comic Sans.
- peeters 13y agoAn ad for a Soviet Bomber, with the description in Comic Sans, followed by a verbatim dump of the TU-95MS Wikipedia page. But the seller has an excellent rating, so it's probably legit.
- logicallee 13y agowelcome to bitcoin.
- logicallee 13y agoI think my comment is extremely fair. If this is in someone's possession, there's no reason a photo on a Tor site can't sell it.
- darklajid 13y agoAnd a German mobile number to contact for any questions you still have, even after reading the copy/pasted Wikipedia article, if you're really daft.
- jackhammons 13y ago"Our partner in the Ukraine have acquired an aircraft of type the TU-95" Hopefully the auction ends before it's repossessed by its "original owners" who are closing in fast....
- trhway 13y agothere is a reason why US and the others were rushing for Ukraine to give up its nuclear weapons 20 years ago :) See Lord of War too. Interesting how recent developments continue to show the difference between how countries are treated when they have nuclear weapons vs. when they don't have, like North Korea vs. Iraq. Looking at Ukraine i wonder what Iran think :)
- twoodfin 13y agoTo be fair, there are many reasons why North Korea was left alone while Iraq was considered "safer" to invade. Seoul being with range of massive amounts of North Korean artillery is one. The concern of both China and South Korea about the potential for floods of refugees is another.
- tormeh 13y agoThe most important thing is that China supports NK for ideological reasons. Sure, China would prefer a communist regime that isn't quite as well suited to parody, but it'll take whatever communist regime it gets for propaganda and ideological reasons.
- magni- 13y agoChina doesn't care about ideology. It cares about having a buffer state instead of US troops on its borders.
- rplacd 13y agoBut I'm convinced if at all, only very reluctantly so - certanly not so over an ideology whose championing stands to benefit not those of Deng Xiaoping's orthodoxy but of Maoist irredentism (Hua Guofeng may only be relevant as a historical footnote dominated by currents with consderably more inertia now, but Bo Xilai certainly seemed to have justified a thorough purging. At the very least I'm confident enough to estabish that faction-on-faction maneuvering in the far past has been justified on ideological differences of a similar magnitude - and that we looked at Bo's dramatics for shades of that precedent.)
- masklinn 13y agoDid people raid the Poltava Museum of Long-Range Aviation? According to wikipedia it has the only Tu-95 in Ukraine (as well as a Tu-160, in case you want a supersonic strategic bomber)
- 3327 13y agoThat is a fine piece of hardware. what would restoration cost? How do you even restore it ? spare parts, technicians on the Tu-95MS are probably not in ample supply.
- Zikes 13y agoI would imagine that as far as expertise goes, a seasoned mechanic in that field could work nearly as well with this aircraft as any other, much the same way our own expertise in computer hardware might translate across varying brands and models, gotchas and idiosyncrasies aside.
- ChrisBland 13y agoOne main issue with owning aircraft like this is not the cost to get it ready to fly from its current state but maintaining it to fly. In the air-force you normally have large mechanic teams that are dedicated to the aircraft. As soon as it lands its taken to the hanger and the teams get to work on it. These are not your normal cessnas where you land, tie down, then come back a week later and throw gas in and go. As soon as these planes land, there is stuff that is broken or needs fixed/tuned each time. You will end up employing an entire team to keep this air worthy. This is the same issue you find with older migs for sale and why they are so cheap.
- Luc 13y agoIt took me only a few seconds to find on Google Maps: https://maps.google.com/maps?ll=46.921164,32.083704&spn=0.007328,0.009259 https://maps.google.com/maps?ll=46.921164,32.083704&spn=0.00... Looks like it has a few siblings, so what you're getting is not as exclusive as you might think... That explains the pictures on the eBay auction appearing to be from different fuselages - they actually are (the two rightmost ones on Google Maps). EDIT: Hmmm, maybe not. Perhaps it's the same plane in different locations, I can't be sure.
- joshmlewis 13y agoDo you have something that helps you search Google Maps or are you just good at doing it manually?
- Luc 13y agoI was hoping you'd ask! It was luck. I had noticed signs of a civilian airport in the background of one of the pictures. When I looked at Nikolayev on Google Maps (I was wondering how close to Crimea these ports mentioned in the eBay auction are) I noticed the airport and zoomed in.
- neurotech1 13y agoI see only two are actual Tu-95s intact and one more in pieces. The others are probably IL-76s. It could be that only one is legally for sale.
- etjossem 13y agoI love the restrictions in Shipping and Handling: "Ships worldwide. Excludes: Africa, Central America and Caribbean, Oceania, Southeast Asia, South America, Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan Republic, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, Georgia, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Maldives, Mongolia, Nepal, Pakistan, Russian Federation, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Oman, Yemen, Bermuda, Mexico, Albania, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Republic of, Cyprus, Gibraltar, Guernsey, Hungary, Latvia, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia."
- kachnuv_ocasek 13y agoI wonder why, for example, Slovakia and Hungary are excluded while Czechia and Poland are not.
- Flammy 13y agoI scanned the list to see if North Korea was on there... its not. Great deal for aspiring dictators and human rights violators!
- happyscrappy 13y agoLike the previous owners.
- United857 13y ago"The airplane is not ready to fly. It is necessary to make a technical service and prolongation of the data limit." Guessing something got lost in translation. In any case. as aircraft maintenance isn't my area, any idea how viable/costly it is to get airworthy? Could you even get spare parts anymore?
- Aloha 13y agoits an open-ended question/answer, honestly.
- TylerE 13y agoSpare parts are probably attainable (there's a reason retired aircraft are mothballed rather than scrapped), and the major companies that the built the engines, etc, are still around. Out of 500 or built ~60 are still in service. Getting parts as a civilian operator might be touchy though. It's probably being sold more as a museum piece. In terms of doing a restoration Russian stuff is usually pretty viable since mechnically they're fairly straightfoward and rugged, and not much in the way of computers or microelectronics of any kind. Even with all that said, it would probably be a $10M+ (quite possibly +++) to get it airworthy again, and even if you did it would be very expensive. Fuel burn on those things is about 2000 gph, and Jet-A is currently ~$6/gal, so you're looking at $12k/hr just in fuel expenses. Maintenance will probably at least double that hourly figure.
- ballard 13y agoI can vouch for this. A friend has a mig that's going to a museum, and they're gonna restore it to museum cond. FYI never tell or show anyone you own a jet in storage or it will be likely robbed of flight / nav gear. High security storage is a must.
- exDM69 13y ago> FYI never tell or show anyone you own a jet in storage or it will be likely robbed of flight / nav gear. High security storage is a must. Is there a story behind this? If it is interesting, can we hear it?
- djyaz1200 13y agoHow convenient that one can just post the spoils of war on ebay now.
- listic 13y agoI know, right? The kind of things they sell on eBay nowadays. Say, some woman sold her virginity http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/after-woman-sells-virginity-for-780000-here-are-the-results-of-our-prostitution-survey-8226025.html http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/after-woman-sell... I thought that would be illegal.
- jksmith 13y agoI dig the details regarding shipping.
- nickmccann 13y ago"The plane was manufactured in 1987 and has been flown 454 hours and 24 Minutes of the estimated 5000 hours it is capable off." Anyone know why there is a 5000 hour limit?
- edwhitesell 13y agoProbably before the next round of maintenance.
- chiph 13y agoThe maintenance service costs at that number of flight hours probably exceeds it's economic value.
- ballard 13y agoYup. It's purely badass value.
- ars 13y agoThe aluminum skin and wings fatigue. It's more a certain number of takeoff and landings rather than flight time. After that the metal is too weak and unsafe. Each time the cabin pressure changes the skin moves. Each time it takes off or lands the wings flex. They probably flex during flight as well. First link I found: http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2011/04/aircraft_fatigue http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2011/04/aircraft_fati...
- coin 13y agoThat still doesn't explain the low total time limit. 5000 hours is low compared to the typical 50000+ hours that modern jets are rated for.
- dragonwriter 13y agoModern jets aren't prop-driven Soviet strategic bombers. They are typically built for comfortable, cost-effective, long-term operation, not to be a credible threat to deter (or carry out) a life-or-death war with an economically far more advanced adversary.
- elwell 13y agoput it on Pawn Stars
- quahaug 13y ago...yeah, sure, let me just call my buddy who used to be a mechanic for Tupolev.
- sswaner 13y ago454 hours of flight time seems low for a military plane built in the 80's. That is not very many flights from the Soviet Union to off the U.S. coastline.
- fredgrott 13y agothere is a TU variant with swept wings, var geometry, and jet engines that replaced this plane that most Russian republics use
- dragonwriter 13y ago> there is a TU variant with swept wings, var geometry, and jet engines that replaced this plane that most Russian republics use "Most Russian republics"? So, more than half of the 1? And "Tu" is just an abbreviation for Tupolev, its not a particular plane of which there are variants. Saying a "TU variant" is like saying a Boeing variant. And there are two different Tupolev strategic bombers that meet that general description (the Tu-22 and Tu-160), neither of which is a variant of the Bear.
- kiiski 13y agoMore than half of the 21 actually. Russia is a federation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republics_of_Russia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republics_of_Russia
- dragonwriter 13y ago> More than half of the 21 actually. So, name the 11 that have militaries that employ the bombers in question.
- kiiski 13y agoNo idea. I was just correcting the notion that there is only one "Russian republic".
- 13y ago
- nateberkopec 13y agoThe best part of this listing is that they accept "Cash in person".
- jokoon 13y agoweird that it doesn't say they're open for a bitcoin price.
- ballard 13y agoYeah, they only take plutonium and heroin. Might be sketchy.
- return0 13y agoAnyone wanna go halfsies?
- bovermyer 13y agoIf I bought this, I would totally convert it into a bar.
- Evgeniuz 13y agoYou can't beat museum opened inside a nuclear silo. And that one is 2-3 hours from where I live :)
- markmassie 13y agoComic Sans is a nice touch.
- alexvr 13y agoWould Russia sell me a Tu-160 for the right price?
- espinchi 13y agoVery appropriate typeface selection
- the_af 13y ago- Seller writes "u" and "dissamble" in "We can therefore dissamble the Plane so u can get one or all of the turbines exclusively" - Price tag of US $3,000,000. Well, I'm convinced. Here is my credit card!
- staunch 13y agoFor anyone else who was curious: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contra-rotating_propellers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contra-rotating_propellers
- fredgrott 13y agoMore info: MS stands for Maritime Strike http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-Bear.html http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-Bear.html
- fredgrott 13y agoobvious question, is there a picture of the tail with the plane number? Than sometimes you can pull up the air flight history
- erobbins 13y agoa good rule of thumb for warbirds is that however much it costs you to buy it is about how much it will cost you per year afterwards to keep it flying.
- jmnicolas 13y agoIf it's legit, I wonder if it is a kind of retaliation for the invasion of Crimea or if the country is just broke and need cash.
- allochthon 13y agoI have a vague sense of playing Eve Online when I see a Soviet bomber for 3M on EBay.
- CmonDev 13y agoThat's a good purchase, Satoshi.
- varjag 13y ago"Payments: Cash in person"